From concern to consumption: how environmental identity and marital status shape ethical consumption behaviour

Given environment and social problems continue to grow, it is timely to study how to facilitate ethical consumption behaviour. Prior literature mainly examines how environmental concern predicts ethical consumption behaviour. However, environmentally concerned individuals do not necessarily consume ethically. Hence, the research outcome remains inconclusive. Through the dual-layered psychological mechanism and life course-based contextual factors of environmental identity and marital status, this study examines the mediating effect of environmental identity between environmental concern and ethical consumption behaviour to resolve the concern-behaviour gap by extending the Attitude-Behaviour-Context (ABC) theory and integrating marital status as a life course-based contextual moderator in explaining when identity is more likely to facilitate ethical consumption behaviour. This study employed Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) with a sample of 321 working adults from urban cities. The finding confirmed that environmental concern significantly influences ethical consumption behaviour, and this effect was also partially mediated by environmental identity. Additionally, the moderating effect of marital status is confirmed. The findings of this study were expected to shed light on the scant literature on ethical consumption behaviour, especially the mediating effect of EID and the moderating effect of marital status. Overall, it is envisaged that our findings are timely because they offer valuable theoretical and practical implications to policymakers, marketers, and environmental advocates to design targeted strategies to facilitate ethical consumption behaviour, as part of the efforts in alleviating adverse consumption impact. Lastly, this study provides a nuanced theoretical contribution by articulating the mediating role of environmental identity in bridging the concern-behaviour gap and conceptualising marital status as a boundary condition to translate environmental identity into ethical consumption behaviour.